Clarke
Human male, born 16 Las'mo', LY 405, in Monab. Died 477, in First Village. Scientist and adventurer. Clarke is best remembered for founding the World Science Council in 437. However, he is also remembered for being the first child born in Monab, which had been founded the year before. Of course, he and the other children born in Monab grew up with a better knowledge of The Order than anyone in the other villages of The Land, since religion had only begun to be truly organized in 404, and Monab was the seat of the Order. On the other hand, the people of Monab also better understood the entire nature of their own village, naturally, than did the people of other villages. It would be some years after Monab's founding before the people of other villages really started grasping the concept of organized religion, but once they did, they could not help but think of Monab as being a village populated almost exclusively by spirit-talkers. This has never been the case, in truth, even though there are far more spirit-talkers among Monab's population than there are in other villages. While it's true that ever since Brist introduced religion to the world in 100, most spirit-talkers had had to hold other, more practical jobs, that was now becoming less the case than it had been for the last three centuries. Which meant that there were also plenty of secular citizens of Monab, with all the same kinds of jobs required to maintain any village on the Land. It was into one such family that Clarke was born. Of course, even such people, while not spirit-talkers themselves, were perhaps more likely to include religion as an integral part of their lives than the people in other villages were. Certainly, when the Order first suggested setting aside We'gindays as a day of worship, it was the people of Monab who first became devout in this weekly observation. Clarke, however, was never a big fan of religion. He had nothing against it, but it was of little interest to him. What was of interest to him was science. In fact, he often said that what he liked best about the Order was its desire to take a more organized approach to the subject of religion than had ever been taken before, and that such orderly thinking was the best way to approach almost any subject, especially science. Another thing he always rather enjoyed was the annual Pilgrimage, because it meant meeting visitors from around the world. Granted, these were all spirit-talkers who came to Monab for religious purposes, but that didn't mean they couldn't have other interests. So in their free time, he often enjoyed conversing with the visitors about any number of subjects (science wasn't Clarke's own only interest, either). Meanwhile, he studied under a number of Monabite master scientists of different fields until he turned 20, at which point he'd learned all he could from them. It was then that he decided to become an adventurer as well as a scientist, though what he basically meant by adventuring was simply traveling and exploring. He wanted to visit the other villages of the Land, as well as seeing if he could find anything of interest in unsettled areas. As with the scientific method, Clarke thought he should take a methodical approach to planning his travels. He started by trying to choose between two different plans: one option was to head north to Ship, and from there sail clockwise around First Land and the surrounding isles. This seemed the most geographically practical route. On the other hand, he could travel first to First Village, and from there travel to each village in the order of its founding. This plan appealed to him more, and yet it seemed needlessly circuitous and time-consuming. Finally, he decided to compromise by starting with First Village, then Tonad, and Sorret; thus far it would be in keeping with the order in which the villages were founded. However, after that, instead of going to the Land's fourth village, Ship, he would skip to the tenth village, Shipsister, which was much closer to Sorret. Then on to the other western villages of Tanq and Jump Village, before sailing to the East Isles, and finally ending his journey in Ship before returning to Monab. His journey lasted from 426 to 436, and along the way he met many people from around the world, including many scientists. While undoubtedly every village he visited was important, the most important was surely Sorret. He had met Sorreters before, when they made their annual pilgrimage to Monab along with spirit-talkers from every other village, but he had never given much thought to magic. It was interesting that some aspects of Sorret and the hierarchy of Sorreters served as a partial inspiration for the development of Monab and the Order, and of course it was interesting to Clarke that magic was ultimately based on very advanced science, far beyond that which would be possible on the Land for centuries to come. But he was more concerned with furthering Landian science in the present, and letting future generations worry about someday getting it to the point where it could replace magic altogether. Nevertheless, he appreciation of and understanding of magic's fundamental principles was enhanced during his stay in Sorret, and the scientists with whom he would stay in touch over the years included both Sorreters and non-Sorreters from that village. It was in 436 that he finally arrived home in Monab, where he expected to spend the rest of his life. He'd thoroughly enjoyed his travels, but he was also glad to see friends and family after such a long absence. Perhaps more importantly, it was practically impossible to receive correspondence via the postal services if one didn't spend much time in any one place, and he was interested in staying in touch thusly with the people he'd met in each village he'd visited in the last decade. Coincidentally, not long after he returned, a game of Surreal was played by a group of kids in Monab, which nearly resulted in the destruction of the world. (For details of the game in question, see the article on Surreal.) In the aftermath of the game, then Arch-bishop Hamish spearheaded a movement to ban the game in every village on the Land. This became the first law to be passed by every village, and the vote was nearly unanimous. However, there would have been no way to enforce the law without the use of sorretry, and so Clarke was asked by Hamish to join in the talks which were conducted at that year's Pilgrimage. It was Clarke himself who suggested the creation of an automated scrying spell to constantly scan the world for the use of the words that initiated any game of Surreal, so that Sorreters could be alerted steps could be taken to put a stop to the game before a single turn could be taken. (These steps were crude at best, until the development of spells such as translocation and t-mail, centuries later.) The entire incident also served to prove to Clarke that there should be a worldwide organization of scientists, something which he'd been thinking about throughout his journey, as he often discovered that scientists working independently in different villages sometimes made new breakthroughs and discoveries, which were actually not as new as they thought. The fact that the whole world could face a simultaneous threat, and that also the people of every far-flung village could work together, inspired him to create just such an organization, which he had feared might not be possible, considering how little travel there was between villages in those days. With this newfound confidence in the feasibility of such cooperation, he moved to First Village, and there started a scientific journal in 437, which could be delivered to every village. (This journal was itself inspired by the newsletters of the Experimental Linguists' Club.) He mailed the first issue of his journal to many of the scientists he'd met in his travels, along with letters encouring them to join him in establishing a World Science Council, which was the first truly worldwide organization (not counting the Order itself). It would in some ways later serve as a model for other worldwide organizations, and at least a partial inspiration to Kizin Planner in his development of The Plan. Category:People